GOP Candidates to Join Pro-Life Forum in South Carolina

Four of the Republican presidential candidates are slated to appear at a pro-life forum in South Carolina on Wednesday to appeal to voters just days before they cast ballots in the third primary election battleground state.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, Congressman Ron Paul, and Texas Governor Rick Perry are scheduled to participate in the Presidential Prolife Forum at the Hilton Hotel in Greenville, South Carolina on Wednesday. Former Governor Mitt Romney has not responded to invitations to attend the event.

The forum follows a pro-life tele-town hall that took place on December 27 that provided voters with additional insight into the pro-life views of the Republican candidates seeking to replace pro-abortion President Barack Obama. As was the case with the tele-town hall event, Personhood USA and other pro-life groups are sponsoring Wednesday’s event.

“In the past, abortion has been relegated as a side-issue, but no longer,” Keith Mason, the head of the group, said in a statement to LifeNews.

“Voters are dissatisfied with liberal Republican candidates who are prolife in word, but not in deed. We have already seen a tremendous outspokenness on the Sanctity of Life from these four candidates,” he added. “Now voters are eager to ask serious questions about each candidate’s prolife position. Over 50 million innocent children have been killed by abortion since 1973, and we want a President who will not sit by and watch the death toll climb.”

The forum will be organized as a town hall meeting, with questions for the candidates posed by South Carolina voters.

Mason said each of the candidates appearing in the town hall have signed a pro-life pledge his group put forward weeks ago.

This is the second pro-life pledge following one sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony Listthis summer that had signed pledge to nominate judges pro-life advocates would appreciate, select pro-life nominees for key administration posts, support de-funding the Planned Parenthood abortion business, and to support a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.

All of the current Republican presidential candidates signed the SBA List pledge except Mitt Romney, who released his own pro-life pledge in response.

The new pledge reads:

I __________________ proclaim that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God, and is endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to life.

I stand with President Ronald Reagan in supporting “the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death,” and with the Republican Party platform in affirming that I “support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and endorse legislation to make clear that the 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn children.”

I believe that in order to properly protect the right to life of the vulnerable among us, every human being at every stage of development must be recognized as a person possessing the right to life in federal and state laws without exception and without compromise. I recognize that in cases where a mother’s life is at risk, every effort should be made to save the baby’s life as well; leaving the death of an innocent child as an unintended tragedy rather than an intentional killing.

I pledge to the American people that I will defend all innocent human life. Abortion and the intentional killing of an innocent human being are always wrong and should be prohibited.

If elected President, I will work to advance state and federal laws and amendments that recognize the unalienable right to life of all human beings as persons at every stage of development, and to the best of my knowledge, I will only appoint federal judges and relevant officials who will uphold and enforce state and federal laws recognizing that all human beings at every stage of development are persons with the unalienable right to life.